Tuesday, January 03, 2012

couched in frugal terms

In October 2011, I discussed with my sweet d-i-l Kristi, what I might get the grandkids for Christmas. She had somel ideas for me.

Three year old Josh has one of these (only in blue):

He loves it. So does 18 month old Sadie.

Sharing is hard work when you are 3 and 1. A good thing to learn, but hard.

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So, I went to Malwart and got one of these. Upon getting it home, I realized it was a piece of junk and I needed to return it. Before returning it though, I measured it. Grandma had an idea.

I went to our local upholstery shop. The door was wide open and when I entered, the proprietor apologized for the smell. The smell of stale cigarette smoke hit me like a ton of bricks, but that was not what he was talking about. 'Yeah," he said, "we've been having problems with sewer gas here."

Well, the smoke was so bad that it overpowered whatever sewer gas there was. I could not buy upholstery foam for my grands in such a place.

So, on a hunch, I stopped at our local bedding store and asked if they had any foam. The salesman said, "Why yes, I do."

He gave me two bags of core samples. I offered to pay. He declined.

Perfect.

I deconstructed the samples (which in their former life looked like this:

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And reshaped them to resemble the couch I had measured.

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Not quite right.

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There, finally, I had the shape and measurements I wanted. I hot glued the pieces to death.
Note to self, buy more glue sticks.

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And then duct-taped all the seams.

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Then, I remeasured all the flat surfaces and raided my small but mighty fabric stash. Perfect - fabric that makes it look like a granny couch (I almost stitched some doilies on the back and armrests, but figured with 3 grands 3 and under they wouldn't last long).

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Here is Sadie sitting on her little couch. She is not picking her nose, but chewing on her doll's bottle.
See doll in a headlock between her knees.

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And here are all three grands sitting comfortably on the couch (I'm not sure 3 month old Lainey is comfortable, but she wasn't complaining), mesmerized by Veggie Tales. When they get back home, Josh will reclaim the Elmo chair as his very own. Before we know it Lainey will be crawling up the Grandma made couch to sit next to her big sis.